60 Sec­onds with...

GT: Do you have a type of pick that you can’t live with­out? AN: I used to use mas­sive tri­an­gu­lar things be­cause Paul Kos­soff used them in all the footage I used to watch. Then I in­creased thick­ness un­til I found what was right for me. I now use the Dun­lop Tor­tex .88 picks (the green one). I rarely get more than one or two gigs out of a pick as I tend to lean in quite hard on them. GT: If you could have only three ped­als, what would they be? AN: I don't use many ped­als so for me to save three of them would pretty much mean I wasn't giv­ing any up! I couldn't live with­out my trusty Ge­orge Den­nis wah-wah, and I sup­pose the other two are my Line 6 Cho­rus Mod­eller and Line 6 De­lay. GT: Do you play an­other in­stru­ment well enough to be in a band (if so what, and have you ever done it?). AN: I love to get be­hind a drum kit. Over the years I did it of­ten enough to get to a rea­son­able stan­dard. I got tired of play­ing in bands with drum­mers who wouldn't know a shuf­fle if it smacked them be­tween the eyes so I thought, I'll do it my­self! I did it for the sheer fun of it and even­tu­ally peo­ple started ask­ing if I was avail­able to do gigs, so I thought, 'Yeah why not?' If I stuck at it then at least I have an ex­cuse that I'm not ac­tu­ally a drum­mer! GT: If a mu­sic chart were put in front of you, could you read it? AN: If some­one put a chart in front of me with one of my OWN songs on it I wouldn't know what it was! GT: Is there any­one’s play­ing (past or present) that you’re slightly jeal­ous of? I don’t view mu­sic as a com­pe­ti­tion. There are loads of play­ers that I think are su­perb. Peo­ple like Paul Kos­soff, Peter Green, Clap­ton, SRV, Sa­tri­ani, Steve Vai, Hen­drix and Brian Robert­son, but I would never be jeal­ous of them. Th­ese guys are an in­spi­ra­tion and make me strive to be a bet­ter player. There will al­ways be some­one bet­ter than you but it's a mat­ter of how you look at it. GT: What’s your favourite amp and how do you set it? AN: Right now I'm us­ing two amps - a Budda Su­perDrive 30 and an or­ange Rock­re­verb 50. Th­ese amps are ac­tu­ally quite sim­i­lar I think... Or maybe it's just that I set them the same and it's the same pair of hands and gui­tar that's play­ing through them. I reckon it's a mix­ture of all of that! I try to get the clean­est sound so that I have a good base to start from, then let my drive pedal do the rest. GT: What strings do you use? AN: I'm lucky to en­dorse Elixir strings. I used them long be­fore I got the deal too! Not only do they ac­tu­ally work, I can get loads of gigs out of one set with the protective coat­ing on them, but I re­ally en­joy the tone from them too. I use .011s but most of the time I ask my friends at Elixir to make a hy­brid set. So in­stead of the stan­dard 11-49 I have 11-52. I re­ally en­joy the heav­ier thicker tone. GT: Who was your first in­flu­ence to play the gui­tar? AN: I'm a huge fan of Free. When I was young I heard Fire & Wa­ter and I'll never for­get Paul Kos­soff’s tone. But more than that it was the way he played. Such pas­sion and fire! It still gives me shiv­ers to­day when I hear the gui­tar solo on a live ver­sion of Woman. GT: What was the first gui­tar you re­ally lusted af­ter? AN: Be­ing a fan of Koss and Peter Green I al­ways wanted a Les Paul. My par­ents bought me one when I was 15. It's the same wine red Les Paul that I'm us­ing to­day and I couldn't imag­ine life with­out it! Thanks mum! GT: What’s the most im­por­tant mu­si­cal les­son you ever learnt? AN: I think we are al­ways learn­ing new lessons whether it be mu­si­cal or in life. I've known a lot of mu­si­cians who let their demons get the bet­ter of them and it's hard to watch - es­pe­cially when some of th­ese peo­ple are your friends. So I think the most im­por­tant lessons I've learned be­ing in­volved in mu­sic is that life can be very short and it can be tough too. But depend­ing on how you choose to live it, life can and is a beau­ti­ful and fan­tas­tic thing. If you're true to your­self and you work hard and put pas­sion and mean­ing in to ev­ery­thing you do then you can have a won­der­ful life and a great ca­reer! GT: If you could put to­gether a fan­tasy band with you in it, who would the other play­ers be? There are so many peo­ple I would've loved to play with. Let's start with drums: Buddy Rich, John Bon­ham, Simon Kirke, Levon Helm! Bass: Mar­cus Miller, Keith Fer­gu­son, Pino Pal­ladino. Keys: John Lord, Billy Pre­ston and Dr John. Gui­tar: Koss, Clap­ton, Green, Ste­vie Ray, Bob Cray, BB King, Gary Moore. Singers: Paul Rodgers, David Coverdale, Danny Bowes and Steve Mar­riott! GT: Who’s the great­est gui­tarist that’s ever lived? AN: There will al­ways be in­no­va­tors who come along like Ed­die Van Halen, Steve Vai, Eric Clap­ton but I think if we have to pin it down one player then I just don't see how any­one could ar­gue that Jimi Hen­drix was the pi­o­neer that changed the world. There were no re­stric­tions and no rules with Jimi. GT: Is there a solo you re­ally wish you had played? AN: David Gil­mour's solo in Com­fort­ably Numb. I played along to that ev­ery day for a long time. GT: What’s the solo/song of your own that you’re most proud of? AN: I recorded an al­bum with my brother around the year 2000 and my daugh­ter was only a tiny baby at the time. I wrote a song for her called You're The Rea­son and ever since then I ded­i­cate ev­ery record­ing I do to her. You're still the rea­son sweet­heart. Love you loads!

Alan Nimmo with the gor­geous wine red Les Paul Std his par­ents bought him when he was just 15.